Deanna, I have a question...

[btz]

Or do you want to make a 100% coconut oil just for experimentation and not for skin use?

To be honest, the only reason why I'm thinking about doing it is curiosity. It's been known to kill cats, but I don't have cat, so hey, why not?

 

[FlybyStardancer]

I got permission to do a superfat swap, if anyone following this is interested in a comparison of superfat levels and what it does or doesn't do for soap. It's listed in the swap section.

That swap looks really interesting! Too bad I'm two months short of being allowed to participate in swaps. I'll just be paying vewy vewy close attention from the sidelines. >_>

I suspect this excess-lye technique may work the best for recipes heavy on the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids -- the fats with double bonds in their chemical backbone that are known to be slow to saponify. Lard has a fair amount of oleic acid in it, so I was willing to try it as a minor player along with the HO safflower.

The easy to saponify saturated fats, like palm kernel and coconut oil, might not benefit as much from this technique. But, hey, this is just a guess on my part -- I'm speaking more from a hunch and I realize I could easily be wrong.

I was thinking of trying this with a bit higher amount of lard... Maybe 50%ish? Still haven't decided. lol My other worry would be that the lard would cool too much and give false trace. And isn't lard supposed to be slow to trace, or am I mis-remembering?

 

[seven]

That looks like that sandwich soap, Seven. It must have gelled inside but not managed the very outer parts. It will be interesting to see how this cures out. Does is tingle or zap on the outside and is the inside different? I'm guessing the inside will not but the outside might tingle, although I'm not ready to lay any money on the line.

i'm not sure about gelling. remembering what happened with this soap since it was molded, it was seriously in a deep water bath. it was literally swimming in the mold and since my mold was silicone, you can see just how much water there was, and there was A LOT! i should've weigh the water just so we know.

just did a zap test, the outside was fine, some parts of the inside were also fine. however, there were some parts near the bottom that were tingling.

Hey there, Seven -- as one charter member to another, welcome to the super-lye-heavy super-ugly soap club! My first batch is awfully homely too, but's drying out well and I think it might be decent soap someday. Even the parts that were originally gooey are now reassuringly solid. I checked again today and all of this soap is not zappy, even in the middle of the bar that I cut apart to test. In 3 days of curing, the bars have lost an average of 12% of their original weight. That's a whole lot of evaporation goin' on!

mine is drying too. can totally see the difference from last night, where the middle was more like a translucent color. today, it's starting to go white, like the outside.

i just measure the weight of my ugly soap again. the soap is now down to 251 gr from 262 gr. if my math is right, that's about 4% lost.

weight of soap:
day 2: 276 gr
day 3: 262 gr
day 4: 251 gr

------------------------------------------------------------

now, to report on my 2nd batch... i am happy to say that the soap has hardened nicely. no water weep, no nothing. i am obviously in awe that the soap is able to hold all that extra water compared to the 1st one.

you can see that the middle looks wetter than the rest of the soap. i'm just gonna give it some time to harden up nicely. i am dying to cut this one!

 

[btz]

Just did 2 batch of this recipe using Sweet Almond Oil (just realized that I have a small amount of this left) and Coconut Oil .

The SAO behaves like OO, I guess. It traces very lightly in around 1 hour and I keep on stirring for extra 15 minutes before pouring just to be sure.




The CO was interesting, to say the least. Straight away, there was small white beads forming, it seemed like the lye had separate the CO from the extra water. I guess the saponification happened too quickly.



I though for sure this will be a failure. But since I was going to stir the SAO for an hour anyway, I though why not. In around 30-40 minutes mark, it thickened. I put the mixture container in warm water bath to prevent the oil from getting too cold.



Around 100 minutes, it was thicken even further even though the white beads didn't disappear altogether. You can see the trace clearly. The final mixture actually reminded me of coconut pudding. I then pour it into the mold.



It'll be interesting to see what would happened next. Unlike the SAO, the CO was still warm when I mold it because of the water bath. I quite like final look of the CO, the white beads will give texture to the soap if it set according to my imagination.

I also set aside a small amount of the soap and added a bit of lavender EO and put it into individual mold. It blended easily to the SAO, but it didn't seemed to blend into the CO. I could see the EO floating on top of the CO soap straight after pouring so I dabbed the EO with tissue.

 

[seven]

my 2nd batch just cut:

notice on the 2nd pic, there are a couple of bars with wet parts on top. when i cut it, i was a bit worried that the wetness might be down to the middle, but looks like it's only the top. hoping it will clear up in time. i remembered when i pour to the mold, the centre top had this tiny bit of separation going on, which is bloody weird. perhaps i should stir a bit longer next time to make it really really thick, just to be safe.

did a tongue test. still zappy!

i wonder if oils known to be slimy, like those noted in the single oil swap blog post, can be fixed using this method..

 

[green soap]

I want to thank AM for starting this thread, and to all of you that have posted pictures and results, this is fascinating! I have been following this thread on the edge of my chair - not sure if you are all nuts for doing this, but the rest of us sure are nuts for following it....

 

[DeeAnna]

Here's the moisture loss for the two recipes I've done. Not too many data points, but the pattern shows there is a LOT more water loss from these soaps than from my "normal" soaps. The bars for my first recipe have lost an average of 14% in 5 days and second recipe is following a similar trend.

Both soaps are not zappy on the outside surfaces of the bars. The older soap is not zappy in the center of the bars either. This is the one that lost so much liquid in the mold, however, and that probably is the reason for the lack of internal zap. The second soap is still zappy in the center of the bar I tested today, so it's still not skin safe.

 

[AnnaMarie]

Have we set a record for longest thread yet???? I'm interested in the hand stirred batch and whether or not it will form lye crystals. That should happen within a day or two, but then as with my previous batches they should disappear within a few weeks. Anybody else have lye crystals forming yet?

I want to thank AM for starting this thread, and to all of you that have posted pictures and results, this is fascinating! I have been following this thread on the edge of my chair - not sure if you are all nuts for doing this, but the rest of us sure are nuts for following it....

I whole heartedly think we are nuts! :crazy:

 

[newbie]

My first bars, made on 2/23 (so this is 6 days in) have lost 24% of their weight, down from 5.0 to 3.8 ounces. Light coating of ash.

Interestingly, my pink swayback bars, the other half of the recipe, have thick ash only on the bottoms (the swayback) parts of the bars. The tops are still sl sticky and soft. No ash on them

 

[AnnaMarie]

I'm still pretty amazed at how this recipe responded so differently to hand blending vs stick blending. In fact, it's almost as if the recipe resists the SB. Why would this be the case in this particular recipe when we use the SB so successfully in so many other recipes? Clearly, it has got to be either the lye or water or both. I may have to use the original Andalusian castile recipe as my control recipe and branch out in more experiments....

 

[DeeAnna]

I think the Lindy/Genny shampoo thread has over 500 responses. But this one is right up there.

"...Anybody else have lye crystals forming yet? ..."

No, I don't think so. Haven't seen anything like that happening, but thanks for the warning, AnnaMarie. I'm getting a lot of practice lately doing zap tests, but I have no desire to lick a lye crystal if I can help it. :sick: I am now very good at quickly telling the difference between a lye zap, which is more of a sting or static-electricity-shock sensation than a true taste, and the bitter/salty/metallic taste of soda ash, which is not exactly a zap, but isn't terribly yummy either.

My first soap (the weepy homely olive oil batch) had so much soda ash on the top when it was still in the mold that the ash was peeling and flaking off. When I unmolded and cut the soap, I pared most of that off in an effort to tidy the bars a bit. The ash has not returned. The darker parts of this soap that were soft are firming up as time goes on, but they are still softer than the lighter outer parts.

The second soap (the safflower-lard blend that didn't weep) is becoming slightly yellowish on the upper parts of the bar. The bars are still clammy from water evaporation. Like I said earlier today, the center of a sacrificial bar from this batch is still moderately zappy. The outside surfaces are not. I sliced a shy 1/8" layer of soap off the bar and tested the cut surfaces for zap. They are about as zappy as the middle, so the CO2 reaction and water evaporation are not turning this soap into a mild one overnight. But that's pretty much what we've all expected.

I have read awhile back that tiny amounts of liquid can be squeezed out of the soap colloid, even when the soap is cured, just by putting pressure on the soap -- much like squeezing water out of a wet sponge. I got a firsthand experience with that tonight. The outside surface of my sacrificial bar was not zappy before I cut the shaving off. After I cut the shaving, I zap tested the shaving. The inner freshly cut face was zappy, no surprise, but what did surprise me was the other surface was now zappy too. I don't know why I checked that surface ... just being curious. Obviously the cutting process had squeezed a tiny film of zappy liquid out of the soap structure onto the surface.

 

[newbie]

I think the longest thread is the Word Association Game in the General Chat area. It's been going since 2006 and has over 500 pages. But it's a game and so not in the same category. This is definitely one of the longer topic threads that have come along- the shampoo bar, a shaving soap one- have also been long. These specialty soaps aren't talked about or made as often and garner more attention, which makes sense, of course!

 

[btz]

Update on the lye heavy CO soap. The white beads texture is gone, all the soap turning white. Here's the picture of the soap first going into mold and 15 hours later. Not sure if this batch gel or not, can't wait to cut it.

Before:

After:


I don't see any soda ash, I keep it covered all night. The soap is hard already, but I'll wait until 24 hours before taking it out just to be safe.

"I whole heartedly think we are nuts!"

I don't think we are nuts, but we are going nuts with this recipe

 

[DeeAnna]

"... it's almost as if the recipe resists the SB. Why would this be the case in this particular recipe when we use the SB so successfully in so many other recipes..."

Most of the time when we're using a SB to make soap, we're emulsifying a lot of fat, a moderate amount of lye-water, and initially a small bit of soap. When all is said and done, we end up with an emulsion of small water droplets floating around in a pool of fat, stabilized by a modest to large-ish amount of soap. In this recipe, we're greatly increasing the amount of water in proportion to the fat and dealing with slow-to-saponify fats -- quite different story.

An emulsion of fat and water can take one of two forms -- water droplets in a pool of oil ~or~ oil droplets in a pool of water. When there's a lot more of one liquid than the other, the choice is pretty straightforward. Most soap batters are emulsions of water droplets in a pool of oil. In the case of this lye-heavy soap, the emulsion could go either way.

Oh!

I think I now know why the SB doesn't work very well. Thanks, AnnaMarie -- you helped me think it through.

When this (or any) soap batter is hand stirred (HS), the mixing is mild enough so the soap-water-fat emulsion forms more or less naturally. As the batter is HS'ed, the water and fat are broken into droplets of various sizes and some gradually form a more-or-less stable emulsion, as more and more soap is formed by saponification during the stirring. Eventually all of the liquid is emulsified and enough soap molecules have formed so the entire batter can begin to thicken to trace.

Remember how you've said your HS'ed batter looked more like a normal soap batter throughout the mixing process? That's a key point -- the emulsion remained in a consistent form (I'm guessing that was a water-in-oil emulsion) and behaved pretty much like a normal soap batter.

When any soap batter is SB'ed, on the other hand, an immediate emulsion is created by the intense mixing. Only the mechanical mixing is keeping the liquids emulsified, because there just aren't enough soap molecules at first to stabilize the emulsion. In a normal soap batter, the intense mixing jump starts the saponfication and enough soap molecules rapidly form to stabilize the emulsion. In your lye-heavy recipe, the saponification is very slow and our normal inclination is to furiously SB to keep all the liquid mixed together. If we stop SB'ing, some of the water phase quickly settles out which triggers the soap maker to SB some more -- or at least I found that to be true, anyway.

Before "trace" occurs in this recipe, the emulsion in this recipe is most likely a water-in-oil emulsion like a normal soap batter. But then something unusual happens at trace with the furiously SB'ed soap. The batter suddenly turns from a normal looking gravy-like batter into a slippery, plastic-y pudding that slips freely around the bowl without making a mark. I believe what's happening at this point is the emulsion is radically changing from a more stable water-in-oil emulsion to a less stable oil-in-water emulsion. At this point, the water has become the "pool" that is holding the fat droplets and the only thing keeping this emulsion from breaking is lots of SB'ing and keeping the batter as cool as possible.

If my thinking is correct, then some SB'ing is fine, as long as the soap maker doesn't try to force emulsification with the blending. If the batter remains in layers for some time, that's fine. Just mix, mostly by hand with modest amounts of SB'ing, to encourage saponification to mosey along. The batter will trace naturally when enough soap has formed to chemically bind all of the fat and water into an emulsified mass -- and the batter will look and act like a normal soap batter the whole time -- as long as the soap maker uses a light finger on the SB button!

Hmmm. I've mused here long past my bedtime and my "brain chipmunks" are closing up shop and going home for the night. I hope this makes sense....

 

[MzMolly65]

I don't know why I checked that surface ... just being curious.

I think you're starting to enjoy getting zapped! :twisted:

 

[AnnaMarie]

Soap update:
My test bar has lost .60 oz as of now. No lye crystals have formed, but this soap burns far worse when the tongue test is performed as opposed to the SB batch. I'm still waiting for my phenol stuff so I can start testing the ph of my original batch.

 

[seven]

my hand stirred batch is also still zappy, while my SB one did not.. kinda makes sense to my lil brain as the SB one lost a lot of water (which has lye in it). cmiiw.

 

[Ellacho]

The thing about a lye-heavy soap "getting milder with enough time" is true. Kevin Dunn did some nice work on this subject; he summarizes his findings in his Scientific Soapmaking book for those with an interest in the nitty-gritty of soap chemistry.

Free sodium hydroxide (NaOH) in the soap will slowly react with carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air to form a milder salt. This salt is sodium carbonate, Na2CO3. It is the same chemical as the white ash that sometimes forms on the top of CP soaps. Sodium carbonate is also the same stuff as the washing soda that is often added to homemade laundry detergent. Although sodium carbonate is basic -- it has a pH above 7 -- it is a much milder chemical than sodium hydroxide. A soap in which free sodium hydroxide has been converted to sodium carbonate will be much gentler to the skin.

Because a bar of soap is a big chunk of stuff, it will take time to convert the excess lye within the soap. If you want to encourage this process, I'd recommend storing the soap so it is exposed to the open air. It's my guess that packaging soap in plastic, for example, might not be the best idea. On the other hand, you don't need to go to the other extreme and run a fan either. Just store the soap on a shelf or in a loosely covered box or whatever and have patience.

Here's the chemistry. First step is for the CO2 to combine with water (from the soap itself or water vapor in the air) to make a weak acid:

CO2 + H2O -> H2CO3 (carbonic acid)

Next, the excess sodium hydroxide (a base) in the soap reacts with the carbonic acid to make sodium carbonate and water:

2NaOH + H2CO3 -> 2H2O + Na2CO3

Yowza! My personal soap calc is coming up with a -43% lye "discount" with AnnaMarie's recipe. The old soap makers would have "boiled and salted" this soap to remove the excess lye, but AnnaMarie's experience clearly shows this soap can be fine as a CP soap if the maker has the patience to let the CO2 do its magic.

edit: I want to add that the old industrial soap makers knew that lye-heavy soap, which was pretty common back then, did become milder with time. But time is money, so they generally didn't cure soap long. They often deliberately sold lye-heavy soap (but NOT this lye heavy!) for laundry and general household use. end edit.

I don't think this recipe would be something I'd unleash on a beginner or someone who doesn't have sufficient patience. I also don't think I'd use this "give it time" approach for a soap that was poorly made -- for example, one that had layers of lye-heavy liquid and oil-heavy soap.

AnnaMarie -- Would you share the link to the SoapQueen post about the recipe? Pretty please?

DeeAnna,
I never took chemistry in high school or college and your explanation totally makes sense and helps me tremendously in understanding the scientific side of soaping. I cannot thank you enough !

 

[DeeAnna]

I'm glad I could help, Ellacho!

I took advantage of the bright sunny day today to take a close look at the bars from my second batch -- the pretty soap that didn't weep. The bars are covered with tiny needle-like soda ash crystals that glitter in the sunlight like diamonds.

 

[newbie]

Day 7. My 5.0 oz bars are down to 3.6 oz which is a 28% loss. No zapping or tingling (and I found myself kind of disappointed, MzMolly )